Officials at a south-central Iowa high school have canceled most homecoming activities after vandals coated the schools windows and doors with a combination of eggs, syrup, cooking oil, ketchup and mustard. Knoxville High School Principal Kevin Crawford says he would have allowed the homecoming festivities to go on as scheduled if someone would have accepted responsibility for the damage.

“We did give them an opportunity to say, ‘this is what we did…we screwed up.’ Step up and do the right thing…but that didn’t happen,” Crawford said. Tomorrow night’s football game against Norwalk will still take place, but the pregame tailgate party and the post-game homecoming dance were canceled. Crawford says he worried about a repeat of the vandalism because of the decision, but says parents have volunteered their time to guard the building.

“Unknown to me, we had a group of parents that stepped up last night and said ‘we’re going to hang out at the school tonight and do our best to put an end to this,'” Crawford said. The parents stayed at the school past midnight. Crawford says most of the 650 students at Knoxville High School are well behaved and he’s feels bad they’re being punished because of a few trouble makers.

“This is just an unfortunate thing. It kind of gives us a black eye,” Crawford said. “I don’t want people to think this is who we are, because it’s not.”